This is a mish-mash of things I see and experience. I hope you like it.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

I've been around

On my way back from Birmingham on Sunday, I was supposed to meet and have lunch with a couple of friends in London. However, I was tired and had a bit of luggage on me, so I cancelled all that and just took the train back to Worthing, got a taxi, and went back to where I was staying. My hosts arrived just a few minutes later, also from London, and then Paul took me to Devil's Dyke to look at the whole of West Sussex from up a hill. I put up a few pictures of the place, and also of people who were hang gliding.

Anyway, Monday I was supposed to go in to the offices of the WORTH project, but I woke up really exhausted. I made my excuses to Paul and went back to bed till noon when Christelle told me that she wanted to come up to Worthing to meet with me since I was unable to meet with her the day before. I met with her at the train station and we went into a Wimpy restaurant (I think it's a fast food joint), and had this delicious grilled chicken sandwich, and shared a treacle sponge dessert (really yummy!). We walked about a bit, and then took the train to Brighton because I was looking at other accomodation. The house was dirty and bad, and it was located in this alley place that did not look safe at all. Chri and I left and I told the guy I would contact him and let him know.

Tuesday morning I left the house around 11am and came to the WORTH office by bus, where I shadowed two of the case workers as they talked to their clients. It was really physically and emotionally draining, and I had a headache after that. I couldn't believe that they went through this day in and day out, seeing numerous people a day whose lives were a living hell. I took some Advil, and needed to take a nap. There was an open office as someone is on leave this week, so I was given a pillow and I slept under the table in the office. :)

Later that evening we all went to a Spanish tapa restaurant called Capricho's to eat tapas, and then we went to a bingo hall to play bingo. It was mad hilarious! :) As they say here, "It was wicked!" After bingo, Chris, one of the ladies, took me to her mom's house, which is where I'll be staying from now on till whenever I want. Her mom is really nice and sweet, and has this cute dog called Skippy. Even better, her mom is really good at knitting, so I hope to pick up a few skills before I leave England.

Today, I had to be up by 7am so I could be ready by 8am for Chris to pick me up, in order to make it to the office by 9am. I didn't fall asleep till almost 3am. As you can probably guess, I'm drinking a lot of coffee. I went to see another client with one of the case workers, and it's heartbreaking when a woman is trying to move on with her life after suffering abuse, and her former partner uses her love for her children to manipulate himself back into her life and try to wield some control over here. Really heavy stuff over here.

This is quite a condensed version of all the things that have been happening, but I don't have regular access to the net now, so I'm afraid this will be how I blog for a while.

Oh, also, a friend of mine from a long time ago, when I used to live in North Kaneshie in Ghana, is here in the UK working as a musician. He got my email addy from our choir director from back then, who I keep in touch with infrequently, and we've been communicating. He's pretty well-known among local churches, and is planning a few concerts this month and the next. I've been invited to sing at some of these concerts. Isn't that just cool?

I should go now. I've been here for too long. I'll put up pictures later, when I can.

1 comment:

Wow! You get to sing at a concert. Thats exciting. Now, i can say i know someone in showbiz. I knew one day you would make our friendship worthwhile.

Funny that you mention Wimpy. My dad used to work at one of those during his grad school days.

You also mention how listening to the stories are emotionally draining. So what are the WORTH case officers take on it ? Did they develop a barrier that allows them to disassociate themselves from their clients ?